Andrew Coyne: Convention a good place for Romney to make his case on the economy

Like George Bush the elder, Mitt Romney seems to erect a mental screen between private life (generally upright) and politics (wildly unscrupulous): politics is that nasty thing you do on the way to governing.

After a long summer of bombarding each other with attack ads, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney enter the convention season almost exactly even.

Not only do the polls have them within a percentage point or two nationwide, but in the crucial swing states, where the electoral college will be won or lost, the race has demonstrably narrowed.

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Narrowed, that is, in Mr. Romney’s favour. In Ohio, where before Mr. Obama led by four or five percentage points, the two are now tied. Michigan, where Mr. Obama won last time by 16 points, is now considered a toss-up. Mr. Romney leads by a point in North Carolina; Mr. Obama by four in Florida, site of this week’s Republican convention. The edge is still with Mr. Obama, but the momentum is with Mr. Romney.

If you’re a Democrat, you’re comforted that Mr. Romney is not doing better, what with the state of the economy and all.

But if you’re a Republican, you’re astonished the Democrats have not been able to put Mr. Romney away, given the resources devoted to “defining” (politics for “smearing”) him as a tax-dodging, job-killing, out-of-touch phoney. With more money left in his war chest, and millions more to spend via “independent” political action committees, the convention is Mr. Romney’s chance to “redefine” himself as thoughtful, decent and caring.

Well, maybe.

Conventions matter, don’t get me wrong. If they are no longer the place where the substantive business of picking a nominee or drafting a platform is done, they are important showcases all the same.

And not only for the candidate. An impressive speech, in a political culture that, much more than ours, values oratory, can launch a career in national politics, as witness the performance by a little-known state senator from Illinois in 2004.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s keynote will be closely watched, as will Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s introduction of the candidate, and of course Paul Ryan’s acceptance of the nomination for vice-president: the race for 2016 or even 2020 has already begun.

But elections, especially in the States, are almost never determined by a single event.

We media types have just spent several weeks pulling our hair out over a succession of gaffes and slip-ups (oh my God, did you see what the British press said about him?) that were supposed to have sealed Mr. Romney’s fate by now: Todd Akin’s musings about rape and pregnancy are the latest in a long line.

It hasn’t turned out that way. By election day they will all have been forgotten.

Likewise, if Mr. Romney’s vastly offputting public persona — the smarminess, the clumsy ad libs, the Thurston Howellish references to his enormous wealth, the periodic casual exchanges of one position for another — were going to sink his candidacy, they would have done so long ago.

Like George Bush the elder, whom he resembles in many ways, Mr. Romney seems to erect a mental screen between private life (generally upright) and politics (wildly unscrupulous): politics is that nasty thing you do on the way to governing. People know that about him, and have largely discounted it.

So whatever the convention’s gauzy attempts to present the “sensitive” side of Mitt Romney, I don’t think that’s what will close the deal. Rather, he has to convert widespread public disaffection with Obama over the economy into a conviction that he can do better.

The Republican base is as lukewarm about him as ever. At a pair of rallies on the eve of the convention, one organized by the socially conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition, the other by the small-government Tea Party, his name was barely mentioned — and raised scant cheers when it was. What drives both groups is a determination to be rid of Mr. Obama, who they are convinced is leading America to perdition, moral or fiscal.

Well, there was one reference to Mr. Romney that was guaranteed to elicit whoops at both rallies: his choice of Mr. Ryan as his running mate. Socially conservative enough to reassure the Christian right, fiscally conservative enough to excite the most ardent Tea Partier, Mr. Ryan has given Republicans a positive reason to show up at the polls, beyond dishing Mr. Obama.

At the expense of frightening off centrists and independents? At other times, his radical plans to reshape the U.S. welfare state might well have. But a good many Americans, not all of them Republican activists, are badly frightened at the direction their government has taken.

Mr. Obama may have extended health insurance to the (sizeable) minority without it, but the already insured majority are concerned what it will mean for them. On the economy, likewise, it is not the 8% who do not have a job who will decide this, but the much larger number who worry they will be out of a job before long, if things carry on as they have.

Is Mr. Obama responsible for the state of the economy — for good or ill? Probably not, even if neither side wants to admit it.

The financial crisis predated his presidency, as did most of the important measures that prevented crisis from becoming collapse: the Federal Reserve’s massive purchases of private and public debt, and the bank bailouts.

Probably there was little anyone could have done to boost economic growth beyond that: recovery from “balance-sheet” recessions is almost always a painfully slow business. Probably, too, the U.S. would be in substantial deficit, no matter who was in charge.

What can be fairly argued is that Mr. Obama’s stimulus efforts have plunged the U.S. government much further into debt, to little noticeable benefit.

That is the case Mr. Romney needs to make: if not that he can restore the economy to full health, at least that he can stop the government from dragging it down. The convention is as good a place as any to start.